Page 16 of The Love Game

‘He’s married?’ Violet couldn’t keep the shock from her voice.

Keris looked unsure. ‘Well, he was. He married Ursula when they were barely twenty-one, and then she got some modelling job in America and took off without him.’

‘But they’re still married?’

‘Now you ask, I’m not sure,’ Keris said. ‘It was a long time ago and she never came back, so either way it’s dead in the water.’

Violet wasn’t sure she agreed. Married was married, whether or not you lived in the same house, or the same town, or the same country.

‘He doesn’t wear a wedding ring,’ she said, sure she’d have noticed.

‘Probably lost it. I’d have chucked it off the end of the pier if I was him.’ She looked up as the pub door opened. ‘Ah, here he is. We can ask him.’

A flush shot up Vi’s neck. ‘No! God, Keris, please don’t. I don’t want him to think I was prying.’

‘You weren’t,’ she said. ‘Or only a tiny bit, but that’s okay. Every woman on the planet asks about Cal.’

Violet was getting a different picture of Cal tonight: charming every woman in town and a wife tucked away somewhere in the world to boot?

Was he a womaniser? And he was the Mayoress’s son too.

The Mayoress who had taken violently against her.

He wasn’t just complicated. He was a seething mass of trouble wrapped up in an easy smile and dark, sparkling eyes.

Violet didn’t want to become another notch on his bedpost, however chivalrous he was about it the morning after.

‘Safely through his front door,’ Cal confirmed, shrugging out of his leather jacket. ‘Bloody hero, he is. Been telling me about the boat he was on that went down in the war.’

Keris laughed. ‘Not that story again.’ She turned to Violet. ‘No doubt you’ll hear it a million times before the summer’s out.’

Vi found herself looking at Cal with different eyes. Married. He’d stood at the altar and promised his forever to someone. That was as big as it got. Perhaps it was amplified in Vi’s mind because of Simon’s recent proposal; marriage was something she’d thought quite a lot about lately.

‘So the plan is to have your own store one day, Keris?’ she said, catching the other girl by surprise with her new line of conversation. Keris blinked a few times before she caught up.

‘Oh. Umm, yes, one day. The rent though …’ She shrugged, as if to say she was in a Catch 22 situation.

‘Same as me, really,’ Vi said. ‘I have a workshop in my mum’s garden back home, but it’s not ideal. And I’m working in the living room here, which is even worse.’

Cal nodded, raising his drink because he was in the same boat.

And that was when it happened – inspiration struck.

‘The pier,’ Vi said, suddenly.

‘ Your pier, ’ Cal said, and Keris clinked her glass to his.

‘To Violet’s pier.’

They toasted her, but she shook her head. ‘No. I mean I know what I want to do with the pier.’

The others looked at her, trying to catch her train of thought.

‘Work there,’ she said. ‘The light in there is perfect. You too, Cal. You could work from there, right?’ She looked at him, desperate for him not to shoot her fledgling plan down.

Turning to Keris, she pressed on. ‘What do you think? Could you open up your store in one of the glass units on the pier?’

Keris opened her eyes wide. ‘Are you serious?’

Violet nodded. ‘For the summer to begin with, but then who knows? If it works, maybe we could stay there.’

Cal looked at her steadily. ‘Why don’t you sleep on it before you get carried away with the idea?’

She frowned. He reminded her for a moment of her father, cautious. ‘You don’t think it’ll work.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he said, leaning forward on his stool.

‘But you’ve been in there, Vi. It would need work, and there’s more units than just three, you’d need to fill the others to convince the council that it’s being put to good use.

If I know my mother that’ll be the tack she chooses – she’ll argue that it should be fully utilised, helping the community. ’

Vi pressed her lips together, thinking. ‘And I will be. I’ll be creating workspaces for small businesses. Yours, mine, Keris’s.’

Keris glanced between them. ‘Our businesses are kind of connected …’ she said, trailing off to let them all see where she was going. ‘Maybe you could make a thing of that?’

Vi was a step ahead, buoyed by the wine and annoyed by Gladys Dearheart. ‘Yes! I could theme it. Lease the units to adult businesses. Nothing too bad – I don’t want to prove your mother right, Cal. But there must be other craftspeople who could come in with us?’

‘Does it even have electric?’ There he was again, Mr Practical.

‘Yes, it flipping does,’ Vi said, sparkly-eyed. ‘Come on, be enthusiastic, this could be great.’

Keris and Vi fell silent and stared at him, and after a long minute a slow smile crept over his face. ‘You know how much this is going to annoy my mother, right?’

Vi considered it, and decided she wasn’t remotely bothered. ‘My pier, my rules.’

‘I still think you should wait and see how you feel about it in the morning,’ he said.

Vi sighed, dramatic. ‘I’m going off you. I thought you were more spontaneous.’

‘I am spontaneous. Just not about business.’

‘Yeah, I heard that about you,’ she laughed lightly.

His dark eyes turned serious. ‘Heard what about me?’

Violet flushed, wishing she hadn’t said something so throwaway. ‘Nothing, forget it.’

Keris jumped up, a sudden movement designed to distract and it worked. ‘Come on kids. School night. Time to hit the hay.’

As they left the pub for the short walk back to the Lido, Violet listened to Keris bubble with ideas for the pier, and listened to Cal say nothing at all.

They deposited Keris on the ground floor with a promise to visit the pier the following day, and then walked upstairs in silence.

Their quietness was born of two things: one, consideration for other residents – the middle flats of the building were leased as holiday lets so you never knew if anyone was staying there or not; and two, there was a new coolness between them that Vi wasn’t sure how tofix.

They hesitated before going their separate ways on the top landing, lit only by moonlight from the picture window.

She broke first. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘People talk, Violet,’ he said eventually, his voice gravel in his throat. ‘It’s not always a good idea to believe everything you hear.’

She wondered about his marriage, and thought about what Keris had said about the number of casual affairs he’d had.

He was right, she had judged him on what she’d heard, and on inspection found she wasn’t very impressed with herself for it.

After all, hadn’t tonight’s public meeting been a classic example of how people could misconstrue and distort the truth?

‘You’re right. I’m not actually a go-go dancer,’ she said, glad when she caught the hint of a smile on his lips in the darkness.

‘And I haven’t shagged every woman in Swallow Beach.’

‘Well, I know that much,’ she said, serious again. ‘Because I live in Swallow Beach.’

What the actual hell was she doing? She was near enough to see the confusion in his eyes, the battle between doing the right thing and doing the thing you wanted to do playing out there on his face. He swallowed, and then reached out and curved his hand around her neck, drawing her close.

‘Go and sleep in your clamshell, mermaid girl,’ he whispered, lowering his mouth to kiss the top of her head. ‘It’s late.’

Violet laid her hand flat against his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart.

God, he smelt so damn good close up, that mix of leather and spice and heat and something indefinable.

God knew what it was, but it was bloody sexy.

He was basically catnip for girls, and right there in that moment Vi was fighting the urge to rub herself against him and see where it led.

Tipping her head back to look at him, she curled her fingers, bunching his T-shirt in her hand.

‘It’s a bad idea, Violet,’ he said. His mouth was close enough for her to feel the heat of his breath.

‘Is it?’ she breathed. Her heart knocked on her ribs, and her skin burned underneath his hand on her neck. His touch was firm; warm, cradling, his thumb skimming her jaw.

‘You’ll think so in the morning,’ he said.

‘I promised myself that I wouldn’t be dull when I came here,’ she said. ‘My life back home is too safe, it suffocates me.’ The words tumbled out of her head into the space between them.

She felt his low huff beneath her hand. ‘Your life might have been dull, Violet, but you’re not. You shine brighter than the fucking moon.’

No one had ever said anything quite so suddenly, joltingly sexy to Violet in her life; she made a noise dangerously close to a whimper.

‘If I kiss you, will you stop me?’

He moved his hand a little, enough to drag his thumb slowly over her mouth as he considered her question. She watched him, his eyes lowered to her lips. He was barely touching her, yet it felt more intimate than most of the sex she’d had.

‘If I kiss you, I won’t be able to stop,’ he said. ‘So you’re not going to kiss me, and I’m not going to kiss you.’

She sighed, disappointment so loud it rumbled out of her. ‘I really want you to.’

He laughed softly, dipping his head to her ear. ‘Go inside.’

Did his mouth brush her ear? Her skin said yes and yearned for more, even as he lowered his hand and stepped backwards.

‘Goodnight Violet,’ he said.

Violet sighed. ‘Will we ever, do you think?’

He was at his door, and she turned away to unlock hers. Stepping inside, they just stood and looked at each other for a long breath across the moonlit landing.

‘Goodnight then,’ she said, forlorn.

He nodded once, then stepped inside and closed his door.